Disclaimer:

These are opinions, not facts and these opinions are mine, not my employers.

Introduction:

Upon receiving the news that HP was to acquire Nimble, I can’t say I was exactly thrilled. Nothing personal against HP, they make great servers, but I like Nimble the way it is right now. None the less, I know the industry is moving in a direction where its either get big, or get out. There is a huge storm “cloud” looming, and if you’re an on premises solution, its going to be a scary time in the coming years.

I was thinking about what would be some of the pros and cons of the HP acquisition and this is what I’ve come up with.

Pros:

  1. HP is a big company and an established one at that. We’ll focus on the pros being big/established in this section.
  2. HP will likely have an easier time pitching Nimble into companies that would not have given them a second look. HP is established, so there’s a perception that Nimble is established. This leads to better market penetration. Nimble getting better market penetration means Nimble makes HP more money and if Nimble makes HP more money, HP invests more into Nimble. Hopefully the circle of money keeps snow balling and we all win.
    1. HP is a world wide company and while Nimble has done a great job so far, HP is going to take them into more countries faster than they could on their own. If you’ve had difficulty getting Nimble equipment purchased “in country”, I can see this getting easier long term.
  3. Obviously HP has more capital at their disposal than Nimble did. If invested correctly, I could see this accelerating Nimble’s innovation.
  4. HP has more purchasing power than Nimble does, this could lead to Nimble’s margins being better, which in turn may lead to us having a more affordable product (or more profit for HP).
  5. Look, we all know why tech companies pick Supermicro, and its not quality, its affordability. HP makes some pretty kick ass hardware, so if we were to see Nimble’s hardware platform change from Supermicro to HP equipment, not only would my datacenter look a little sexier, I wouldn’t cut my fingers trying to rack Nimble anymore.
  6. If you’re a current HP customer, I can see two nice integration points.
  7. Infosight for other HP solutions.
  8. Nimble integration into OneView.

Cons:

  1. As mentioned in the pros, HP is a large established company. While this in its self can have some pros, it also has the potential for a number of cons.
  2. Big companies tend to move slow, bureaucracy and over analysis being suspect causes. Nimble had far fewer hoops to jump through before making a decision. Just remember, deadlines and accomplishments drift a day at a time. Days become weeks and weeks become months, and you get the picture.
  3. Every company is profit conscious, but some larger companies will kill any sliver of waste, even at the cost of productivity or customer satisfaction. I’m not saying it will happen with HP, only that it could.
  4. While HP will open a lot of new doors for Nimble, it has the potential to close a lot of existing ones too. There are a lot of companies that have had bad experiences with HP and this may be enough for them to drop Nimble. That said, being realistic, it seems one way or another, you’re going to be purchasing storage from some big vendor, and it may not be the same as the one you purchase servers from.
  5. If HP tries to assimilate Nimble into their ways, I can see this being bad for Nimble customers. Nimble for example has a great support experience. If HP tries to force Nimble to adopt their triage and support structure, that would be a quick way to devalue Nimble. There’s other things too, like getting stuck speaking with a generic HP sales rep and sales engineer, instead of having direct access to a Nimble SE and a Nimble sales person, or other typical large company sales and support processes.
  6. HP hasn’t made a great name for themselves here of late. We know they’ve split the company in half and sold off a lot of assets. It’s hard to say if it’s too little too late, or if it was the right move and just in time. Regardless, HP to me is a company that’s walking a fine line of a falling giant, or one that’s getting back on its feet. If HP goes down, Nimble goes with it, and that’s not good for Nimble customers.
  7. HP isn’t exactly synonymous with innovation, at least not any more. I fear that HP has the potential of choking the life out of Nimble. In my opinion, 3Par was a great storage solution. Part of me wonders if HP couldn’t make that work, what makes them think Nimble will be any different? Meaning, are they going to turn Nimble into the next Equallogic?

Other thoughts:

I think deep down everyone knew Nimble wanted to get bought. Me personally, I was REALLY hoping Cisco was going to buy Nimble. In my opinion, Cisco + Nimble would go together like peanut butter and fluff. HP already has a storage company that’s flailing. I don’t want Nimble to follow suite. People like to remind me about about Whiptail and how bad that was. I look at that as a rash move on Cisco part (the solution was doomed to fail), but Nimble would be a pick that no one could blame Cisco for. Best of all, Cisco doesn’t have any competing products (other than Hyperflex, but that’s a different type of solution). This would have led to a much stronger and untied focus on pushing Nimble. From Nimble’s view, it would have solidified them as being established (opening the closed doors), and for Cisco, it would have given them a proven storage startup that’s on fire. Honestly, if I was Cisco’s CEO, I would be doing everything I could to steal the deal from HP. If it was a matter of HP vs. Dell vs. Cisco, and Cisco was the one with Nimble, IMO, Cisco would crush the other two like a ten-ton hammer.

Conclusion:

This is obviously all speculation at this point, just thinking out loud. I hope all the pros of what I pointed out occur with the acquisition and none of the cons. I wish both vendors the best of luck, and until proven otherwise, I’m still a diehard Nimble (HP) fan.